A distributed application architecture has many compelling benefits, but it has also one very significant drawback compared to a monolithic application architecture - the former is way more complex. To tame this complexity, the industry has come up with some important best practices and patterns. In the following sections, we are going to look into some of the most important ones in more detail.
The best way to address a complex subject has always been to divide it into smaller sub problems that are more manageable. As an example, it would be insanely complex to build a house in one single step. It is much easier to build the house up from simple parts that are then combined into the final result.
The same also applies to software development. It is much easier to develop a very complex application if we divide this application into smaller components that interoperate and together make up the overall application. Now, it is much easier...